knowledge that her daughter will never make a false step in the stately minuet of etiquette, or strike a discordant note in the festival of life; that she will never laugh too loud, nor turn her head in the street, even when the gay and glittering "king of the cannibal isles" rides by, nor do anything odd or queer or unconventional. To the mother who believes that good manners can be taught in books and conned in dancing schools, there is something to satisfy the heart's finest craving in a strictly conventional daughter, who thinks and acts and speaks by rule, and whose life is like the life of an apricot, canned, or a music box wound up with a key. But to my thinking, my dear, good manners are not put on and off like varying fashions, nor done up like sweetmeats, pound for pound, and kept in the storeroom for state occasions. They strike root from the heart out, and the prettiest manners in the world are only the blossoming of a good heart. Surface manners are like cut flowers stuck in a shallow glass with just enough water to keep them fresh an hour or so, but the courtesy that has its growth in the heart is like the rosebush in the garden that no inclement season can kill, and no dark day force to forego the unfolding of a bud.

VIII.

MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

I am more and more convinced the longer I live that the very best advice that was ever given from friend to friend is contained in those four words: "Mind your own business." The following of it would save many a heartache. Its observance would insure against every sort of wrangling. When we mind our own business we are sure of success in what we undertake, and may count upon a glorious immunity from failure. When the husbandman harvests a crop by hanging over the fence and watching his neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and for me to achieve renown in any undertaking in which we do not exclusively mind our own business. If I had a family of young folks to give advice to, my early, late and constant admonition would be always and everywhere to "mind their own business." Thus should they woo harmony and peace, and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life.

IX.

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.

In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shall I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never will, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire—no blood in 'em! Cut them and they would run cold sap, like a maple tree in April. Such people are always frightened to death for fear of what the world is going to say about them. They are under everlasting bonds to keep the peace. I wonder that they ever un-bend to kiss their children. If one of them lived in my house I should stick pins in him. Morality and goodness that lie no deeper than "behavior" are like the veneering they put on cheap tables—very tawdry and soon peeled off.

X.

NOTHING SO GRAND AS FORCE.

Reading about the superb management of the big fire the other day, a certain girl of my acquaintance remarked: "Is there anything so grand in a man as force? In my estimation those firemen and the chief who so splendidly controlled them are as far superior to the dancing youth, we meet at parties and hops, as meat is better than foam." Put that into your pipe, you callow striplings, who aim to be lady-killers! It is not your tennis suits, nor your small feet, nor your ability to dance and lead the german that makes a woman's heart kindle at your approach. It is your response to an emergency, your muscle in a tilt against odds, your endurance and force, that will win the way to feminine regard. As for me there is something pathetic in the sight of a big, handsome fellow in dancing pumps and a Prince Albert coat. I would rather see him swinging a blacksmith's hammer, or driving a plow through stony furrows if need be. The "original man" was not created to shine in the military schottische or win his laurels in the berlin.

XI.

A RAINY RHAPSODY.

Gently, idly, lazily, as petals from an over-blown rose, while I write, the welcome rain is falling. The sky is neutral tinted, save in the east, where a faint blush lingers. All along the country roadways a thousand fainting clovers uplift their purple crests, and in the dusky spaces of the dense June woods a host of grateful leaves wait and beckon. A voice comes from the garden bed; it is the complaint of the pansy. "Here I lie," it says, "with all my jewels low in the dust. Where is the purple of my amethysts, the yellow of my topaz, the inimitable sheen of my milk-white pearls? Alas and alack for pansies when the rain beats them earthward!" The marigold, like a yellow-haired boy with his straw hat well back from his flying mane, whistles softly to himself for joy, and buries his hands in the pockets of his green breeches. The peonies burn low their tinted globes of light, and the sweet peas swing like idle girls upon the tendrils of their drooping vines. The dog lifts his nose and sniffs the moist air approvingly, while poor Old Tom, the cat, blinks benignly upon the scene. In the poultry yard the hens pose in the same indescribable amaze that has bewildered their species since the dawn of time. I think the first chicken that was ever hatched in Eden must have experienced some great nervous shock that has descended along the infinite line of its progeny. The monotonous rooster chants ever and anon from the top of the fence his unalterable convictions. The ducks waddle waggishly through the rain and the pigeons coo softly the mellowest melodies that ever sounded from a feathered throat.

XII.

CAUSE FOR WONDER.

I do not wonder so much that so few people blossom into sunny old age, as I wonder that one-half of humanity ever shows a leaf or unfolds a bud. Look at the idiots who have children. Look at the little ones thrown into the street like troublesome kittens. Look at the injudicious methods of diet and training. I declare, my dear, if I were to go into the room where Theodore Thomas was rehearsing his orchestra, and see the flutists using their flutes for hammers, and the violinists using their violins for tennis rackets, and the divine old cello in the hands of a lusty blacksmith who was utilizing it for an anvil, the sight would be nothing to what it is to see the muddle we make of the children's sweet lives. God meant us for musical instruments, and gave to each soul its capacity for some original harmony. Can a flute keep its tone for three score years it you use it for a clothes stick on wash day, or a violin retain intact the angel voice within it if you let rats breed and nest in it, fling it against the side of the house and dance on it with hob-nailed boots? If an instrument subjected to such usage pipes out a silver note once in a dozen years, uncover your head when you hear it, for it is the original angel within the mechanism, which nothing can kill!

XIII.

THE FIRST KATYDID.

The first katydid of the season has whipped out his bow and drawn the preparatory note across the strings of his violin. He is alone at present and he plays to an empty house, but it will not be long before the orchestra fills up and the music is in